Labor Day Was Never Meant to Celebrate Labor

By Dr. Potts | WPS.News | September 1, 2025

Every September, Americans fire up grills, host retail blowouts, and post patriotic memes about the dignity of work. But the truth is far less festive. U.S. Labor Day, as celebrated on the first Monday in September, wasn’t established to honor workers—it was crafted to neutralize them.

While the rest of the world recognizes May 1st as International Workers’ Day, honoring labor struggles and the bloody history of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, the U.S. government deliberately distanced itself from that date. President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law in 1894 during a wave of anti-union backlash, particularly to undercut the growing influence of socialist and anarchist movements among workers (Greenhouse, 2019).

May Day, with its roots in the U.S. labor movement, became a global symbol of worker unity. Ironically, it was American elites who rejected it outright. The Haymarket Affair of 1886, in which a peaceful rally turned deadly and labor leaders were executed under flimsy evidence, cemented May 1 as a day of resistance abroad—and a date to erase at home (Avrich, 1984).

By placing Labor Day in September, the U.S. offered workers a safe, apolitical holiday—complete with parades and picnics, but no strikes, speeches, or solidarity with global movements. The date’s selection was not about honoring labor; it was about controlling it.

That control intensified during the Cold War. In 1955, amid McCarthyism and post-war paranoia, President Eisenhower formalized “Loyalty Day” on May 1, reframing the day as a celebration of allegiance to the U.S. government rather than the laboring masses (U.S. Congress, 1955).

Yet by the 1960s and ’70s, Labor Day had evolved into something else entirely—a cultural reset button. It became the last big festivity of summer, the symbolic start of the school year, the new car model season, and most iconically, the fall television premiere lineup. For many, it’s impossible to forget the now-vintage ABC Network jingle, “Come this September, this is the place to be,” as the camera zoomed in on a suburban split-level home where families gathered around the TV. That moment lives on—not as politics, but as tradition.

This nostalgia, however sweet, doesn’t change the origin story. Labor Day in the U.S. was engineered to sidestep revolution and reinforce consumer normalcy. Post-WWII veterans returned home politicized and skeptical. The ruling class responded with symbolic containment. Labor Day became burgers and bunting—not barricades.

Today, in an era of gig labor, wage theft, and re-criminalized unionizing, it’s time to ask: Whose interests does this holiday really serve? Workers didn’t die for mattress sales. They fought for power.

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References (APA Style)

Avrich, P. (1984). The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton University Press.

Greenhouse, S. (2019). Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor. Alfred A. Knopf.

U.S. Congress. (1955). Joint Resolution to Designate May 1 as Loyalty Day. Public Law 85–529.